Black and White

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No, not the infamous cookie delight, the thought process.

A nice gal I met that did some personal training sessions with me last summer gave me some very sage advice regarding attitude toward fitness and eating. She said that successful eating and exercising is not black or white, there is a multitude of gray. For example, you cannot see your sampling of the office birthday cake as a complete failure of the whole day. Maybe you made what you consider a blunder and fell of the proverbial horse or wagon, but the day is not ruined. Did you eat only one piece of that cake instead of your usual two? Did you eat a healthy breakfast? Did you trade the greasy lunch Panini and/or creamy soup for a salad topped with protein? Did you walk to work?

Allow me to once again mention my reality show lover The Biggest Loser. One thing I connect with and love about this season is that focus has recently turned to balance. The final handful of contestants have gotten almost cruelly tough on themselves with their personal food regimens, so much so that their fierce trainer Jillian (I will surely write of my love and fear of her at some point) had to stress moderation and show them that on special occasions it’s okay to have a glass of wine and a little dessert because if you’ve worked out and planned ahead you will be okay consuming those 500 extra calories. My precious Tara was beating herself up about a moment of weakness one night after a work out when she went to the grocery store and kept being drawn to an old food flame, pita chips. Jillian’s words of brilliance: You can’t go through life without pita chips. Surely I misquoted, er, misitalicized that, but you get my drift. I connect so strongly to this, because I can get very obsessive with dieting like this as well and use that terrible phrase, I can’t have that. Yes I can, and I will, because only Unconfident and Negative BB30 use that phrase and don’t have balance, and they aren’t invited to my getting’ fit party.

I find that I err so much on the black and white way of thinking. I am very hard on myself about little stumbles and let them pollute my successes for the day. This is something I will be trying to conquer over the next year.

Here’s to striving for more gray!